


As Proud As Love

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Samhain to the Solstice 2020 [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Creature Fic, Drama, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, Romance, Veela Lucius Malfoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:34:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27598967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Some idiot invented a potion after the war that gives whoever consumes it the characteristics of a Veela—and people keep taking it to find their mates or impress their lovers. A shame that the transformed people are violent and leak allure until they find their true mates. Harry Potter, immune to the Veela allure because of his unrequited love for his ex-girlfriend, provides guardianship for transformed Veela against other people and their own impulses until they can find their mates. Guarding Lucius Malfoy should have just been another such duty. But Malfoy is taking an unusually long time to find his mate.
Relationships: Lucius Malfoy/Harry Potter, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: From Samhain to the Solstice 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993852
Comments: 73
Kudos: 1231





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. This should have four parts.

“Auror Potter, another one for you.”

Harry nodded and laid down his quill as he walked out from behind the desk in his office, smoothing the soot from his robes. He hadn’t had time to change after the dragon attack, but at least no one could see the claw marks on his chest, and he’d already been treated by a Healer and had the robes repaired. “What kind?”

“Veela potion.”

Harry rolled his eyes and gestured for Healer Eric Arcanus to pull his head out of the way so he could use the Floo to reach St. Mungo’s. Arcanus had barely moved when Harry spun through the fire, muttering imprecations on the Veela potion and its inventor all the way.

He rushed through the fireplace and managed to land in a less-than-awkward heap on the other side. Arcanus quirked his lip in a small smile. “At least I don’t need to heal a concussion this time.”

Harry pointed a finger at him as he straightened and rid his robes of the soot. “Hey, I haven’t hit my head on the hearth in at least a year.”

Arcanus sighed as he turned and gestured Harry down the corridor that led away from the Floo and towards the ward for victims of stupid potions. “Too bad. That means that you won’t forget yourself long enough to date me.”

Harry rolled his eyes. Arcanus was a tall dark-haired man, handsome enough, a fit Quidditch player the way Harry liked them, but Harry’s heart was given. “Someday you’ll tell me that I’m needed for a magical creature complication, and I’ll get here, and it’ll just be you attempting to seduce me.”

“I have a goblin ancestor. I could count as a magical creature in distress.”

Harry raised an eyebrow and ran an eye up and down Arcanus’s lanky, striding height.

“A very _distant_ goblin ancestor.”

Harry laughed and shook his head. In a way, it was too bad that he wasn’t attracted to Arcanus. They got along well, he had a sense of humor, and he wasn’t starstruck like some of the other people who tried to get into Harry’s pants.

But Harry only thought of one person who made his breath stutter, and she was in true love with someone else. He couldn’t wish her any ill, and he couldn’t wish to move on. There was always the chance that Ginny, who had fallen in love as suddenly and violently as she did everything else, would fall _out_ of love one day, and come back to him.

And, at least right now, it made him useful. They rounded the corner and came into the middle of a room full of drooling, shrieking, fainting, heart-clutching men and women. Even Arcanus paused, hovering near the door, although he was a Legilimens and usually had better control over himself.

“Who is it?” Harry felt the allure, but it washed over him with no more effect than moonlight.

Arcanus cleared his throat. “Lucius Malfoy.”

Harry’s mouth tumbled open. “You’re _kidding._ A blood purist decided to sully himself as a creature?”

“It might have been forced on him,” Arcanus pointed out. “Um. The shields might not hold against his adoring fans for much longer.”

Harry sighed and stepped into the hospital room, walking through the swooning crowd of people and the uncontrolled Veela allure. When he came to the shield, a seam of nearly invisible blue light that stretched down the middle of the room like a curtain hung from nothing, he stepped through. The shield was meant to keep out only the people who wished to ravish Malfoy, and Harry didn’t fit that category.

The woman he wished to ravish had chosen someone else.

In the small portion of the room beyond, the noise of the crowd abruptly dimmed. Harry looked around. The only furniture in sight was a small chair and Malfoy’s bed, converted into essentially a canopied one by the presence of more curtains around him. Magical ones, Harry thought as he stepped forwards and they, too, dissipated into nothing.

He caught his breath. He’d never seen a victim of the Veela potion in such bad shape. Malfoy thrashed on the bed, his mouth opening and closing, his eyes tightly shut and with silver feathers growing out of the corners. In fact, silver feathers were bursting in and out of his skin in random places, then shrinking and withering and sinking back in, and his shoulders looked hunched and swollen with wings that couldn’t come out.

“Poor bastard,” Harry said under his breath. He didn’t _like_ Malfoy, but he didn’t have to like someone to feel compassion. He reached out and touched Malfoy’s face gently with the edge of his palm.

The change was instantaneous. Malfoy arched deeply, and the feathers growing through his skin molted in a fall of silver. The swollen bumps on his shoulders disappeared. He fell back, and into sleep.

“Auror Potter?”

Arcanus’s voice was tentative. Harry turned around to smile at him. The room beyond had already cleared, and the slight wave of heat that had told Harry Malfoy was projecting Veela allure had vanished. Arcanus parted the shield with ease, this time, and stepped in, shaking his head.

“I wish I knew how you do it.”

“Lose your heart, and you can do it, too,” Harry quipped lightly.

For once, Arcanus didn’t smile. “No, I’m not just talking about resisting the allure. I’m talking about soothing them like that.” He nodded to where Harry’s hand was resting against Malfoy’s cheek. Harry didn’t want to move it just yet, in case it made Malfoy wake up. This had been a pretty bad case.

Harry shrugged. “I didn’t do so well when I was younger with the allure, either. I think it’s because—well, this is going to sound offensive, but because I didn’t grow up in the magical world.”

“I know you don’t mean that blood purist bollocks.”

“Of course not. I mean that I didn’t get exposed to prejudice about various creatures, or people with creature blood. When I met them, they were just more people to me. Strange ones, but people. My best friend’s sister-in-law is a part-Veela, and I never thought of her as a _creature._ Just a bloody annoying person, sometimes.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Arcanus’s face was still tense, his eyes flicking between Harry and Malfoy. “Do you—do you need anything?”

“I don’t want to leave him yet. I’ve never seen someone sprouting feathers in random places like that.” Harry rolled his eyes and ignored the speculative look on Arcanus’s face. No, he wasn’t interested in seeing underneath Malfoy’s clothes and the _other_ places feathers might have sprouted, thank you very much. “So maybe a couple cushions and some food? Something to drink?”

“Of course.” Arcanus eyed the way Harry was still holding his hand against Malfoy’s cheek, and the way Malfoy was nuzzling into him. “Do you need me to tell your department that you won’t be back tonight?”

“Please. They’ll be wondering where the hell my report is.”

“Report?”

“Ran into a dragon today.”

Arcanus blinked a few times, then said, “Ah. One not impressed with your compassion for all magical creatures.”

Harry grinned. “No. And can you bring the cushions first? I’m getting a bit of a crook in my shoulder standing here.”

*

It was hours later, after he’d eaten scones and tea and a corned beef sandwich one-handed, that Harry finally dared to take his hand away from Malfoy’s cheek.

Malfoy shivered and gathered his body in the bed, and Harry found himself tensing. He would Stun Malfoy unconscious if he had to, if he woke up screaming and sprouting feathers again the way he had earlier.

But Malfoy slowly rolled on his back and opened his eyes. They were more silvery than grey, causing Harry to frown. The changes from the Veela potion really had gone much deeper than he usually saw. Most of the people who drank the potion didn’t grow wings, either.

Malfoy licked his lips and coughed. Harry held up the second glass of water that Arcanus had left and asked, “Do you want something to drink, Mr. Malfoy?”

Malfoy leaped in the bed without rolling from his back. He did roll his head and stared at Harry with eyes that looked like flat pools of water, the pupils almost lost. “Mr. Potter?”

Harry nodded. “Yes, they brought me in to soothe you when your changes were getting out of control. Water? You sound like you need it.”

“I want to know where my wife and son are.”

“They haven’t been able to visit yet,” Harry said gently. He continued to hold out the glass, and after a moment Malfoy nodded. Harry conjured a straw and let him sip slowly. Malfoy managed to sit up a little to do it, which was an encouraging sign, although Harry didn’t like the way his breath rasped in and out of his lungs. Another symptom that not that many people with transformed Veela features had.

“Why not?”

Harry set the glass aside. “You were projecting allure in such quantities that half the hospital staff were swooning for you. They couldn’t try to get through. And you were transforming in random spurts, feathers appearing around your eyes and in your hair and on your hands. You half-manifested your wings, then reabsorbed them. I think Mrs. Malfoy and Draco probably stayed away because they wouldn’t have wanted to see you in that state.”

“ _Wings_?”

Harry nodded. “It’s not very common, but it does come along with the potion.”

“The potion was only supposed to give me the beauty and the seductive skills of a Veela. Not the physical features.”

Harry bit his tongue to avoid saying what he thought of people who took potions without researching them thoroughly. It wasn’t like he had reason to talk about Potions skills, but, well, this was _common_ knowledge now, and Harry thought the inventor of the Veela potion would have deserved being sent to Azkaban. “It didn’t work that way.”

“Obviously.” Mr. Malfoy stared at him again. “And why did they summon you?”

“I’m immune to Veela allure. And sometimes my touch can soothe the worst excesses of the potion.”

“You have _touched_ me?”

“Only on the cheek,” Harry said calmly, meeting the man’s eyes and ignoring the way his hand was twitching on the blankets as if groping for his wand. “That was necessary to get the feathers and the wings to melt back into your skin.”

Malfoy shut his eyes tightly. “Why did it have to be you?”

“I’m the only one who can.”

The man went back to his hoarse breathing, and Harry frowned, wondering if he should call Arcanus. The Veela potion caused bouts of transformation, allure, and mate-seeking, but Malfoy was in between them now. It shouldn’t harm anything to have a Healer in the room.

He’d just about decided to do it when Malfoy whispered, “I took it to impress Narcissa.”

 _What the hell?_ Harry managed to refrain from saying. He just nodded and said, “Well, I think your wife will probably be your true mate, Mr. Malfoy, and she and your son will visit as soon as it’s safe.”

“But what if she’s not?”

 _Why do I have to reassure idiots who took the potion in the first place?_ Harry thought, but he smiled a little and said, “It’s very rare that that doesn’t happen, Mr. Malfoy. Unless someone takes the potion and doesn’t have any idea who their mate might be, of course. But for someone already married or seriously involved with someone else—”

“Harry?”

Arcanus was standing in front of the bed, and Harry frowned at him a little. He shouldn’t have come back without some word from Harry that it was safe. Had the allure still been striking out in waves, he could have succumbed, and then Harry would have had to subdue him without hurting him, which his magic wasn’t great at when it came to pure humans.

But he nodded and stood back since it was all right, and said, “I think Mr. Malfoy is ready for his first dose of magic-stabilizing potions, Healer Arcanus.”

He spoke deliberately loudly, and Malfoy did relax a little when Arcanus stepped forwards and put the first load of green potions down on the table next to his bed. But both of them looked up when Harry took a step further back.

“You are not leaving yet, Mr. Potter?”

“Auror Potter?”

Arcanus’s voice was a little louder, as if he wanted to correct Malfoy on the title, but Harry only shook his head. “Just have to go to the loo and to cast a few Refreshing Charms on myself. I’ve been here since four this afternoon, and it’s after midnight now.”

“I didn’t realize you hadn’t taken a break,” Arcanus said, his face turning a little red. “You could have, Harry, you know that.”

Malfoy made a small sound and turned away as if he thought that Harry had been here that long just to add to his humiliation when he woke up. Harry shrugged and said, “I don’t like letting newly-turned Veela wake up alone, you know that, Healer Arcanus.” Remind the man of the distance, and from the slightly redder tint to his cheeks a moment later, he’d got the message. “I’ll be just a moment.”

He left the room and sighed as he walked down the corridor towards the loo. With any luck, since Malfoy was already married, this would be a short one, and Harry could go home soon.

But remembering how bizarre and twisted the feathers had looked coming through Malfoy’s skin, part of him doubted it.

*

“I didn’t know you were going to permit the Malfoys to visit him _this_ early.”

Arcanus frowned at Harry. “They insisted, the moment they heard that he was past the worst of the potion’s effects. And you don’t have the final say anyway. Why are you acting as if you do?”

Harry opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again as he watched Malfoy touch his wife’s hand. Narcissa Malfoy had her eyes closed and her mouth moving in soft words, probably speaking about her relief at seeing Lucius well. He and Arcanus were standing far enough back that they couldn’t hear what the words were, on the other side of the ward.

Why _was_ he acting this way?

It was true that he didn’t want his hard work in…staying by Malfoy’s bedside…to be for nothing, but the man seemed to be fine now. And he hadn’t done _that_ much hard work, had he? Just sat in one place with his hand on Malfoy’s cheek, that was all. It had been uncomfortable, but hardly difficult.

Harry sighed and shook his head. “Ignore me. I just keep thinking of the way he looked when he was brought in, and I reckon that I made the decision that his family shouldn’t see that without reasoning it through.” He deliberately turned his back on the Malfoy family gathering around the bed, Draco giving his father a worried frown. “So, what’s the diagnosis? Why did the Veela potion react that way to him?”

Arcanus hesitated. Then he said, “He was fighting the effects.”

“Well, of course he was. I never thought a blood purist like Malfoy would relish what the potion turned him into.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean that the potion apparently didn’t bond him to his wife the way it should have.”

Harry stared, but Arcanus’s expression didn’t change. Harry swore softly. “So she _isn’t_ his mate?”

“No. It’s someone else.”

Harry sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “And he took the potion to impress his wife. Wonderful.”

“He told you that? He wouldn’t tell any of the Healers on duty why he’d taken it.”

“Well, he probably didn’t have much chance before the allure he was spewing overtook them.”

“ _Spewing_.”

“What?”

Arcanus rolled his eyes. “Only that you’re the only one who would ever describe it that way. The allure is a gift that can bind a Veela and his or her mate together forever, and—”

“It’s a will-stealing compulsion,” Harry said flatly. “I know that immature Veela and some who have mixed blood can’t always help it, but people who take the potion are inducing it because they want to be more special than they are. They absolutely _can_ help it. They don’t have to take the potion.”

It was too bad that the inventor of the potion, Reginald Selwyn, had ended up having an allergic reaction when he took it himself and died of it. Harry would have liked to have a long, long conversation with him about why the fuck he’d invented it in the first damn place.

Arcanus was studying him with an extremely odd look on his face. Harry raised his eyebrows. “What? I know that you’re probably going to say I have a skewed perspective on what it’s like to be someone special, but—”

“No. I was just going to say that you’re not a very romantic person.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t think love has anything to do with taking away someone else’s chance to say no.” For a moment, his chest pulsed with warmth as he remembered Ginny coming to him and telling him that she’d fallen in love with Ernest Wallman, a Muggleborn who had been at Hogwarts in the year behind her. She had been _honest_ with him, and that was one of the many things Harry admired about her. She hadn’t broken his heart. It was intact and waiting for her if she ever felt like coming back to claim it.

A loud screech announced that the Malfoy visit was probably coming to a natural end. Harry hurried over and ignored the way that Draco glared at him as if he had injured Lucius personally. Harry leaned his hand on Malfoy’s cheek.

The feathers that were trying to sprout through the palms of his hands immediately smoothed back down under the skin. Malfoy’s hair lost its unnatural silvery sheen, and he closed his eyes and dropped into what looked like flat unconsciousness.

Harry sighed and took his hand away, standing back to let Arcanus examine his patient. Draco immediately said tightly, “Potter, a word?”

Harry glanced around for Mrs. Malfoy, but it seemed she’d already left. Well, it couldn’t be easy to see someone you loved in that kind of pain, whether or not they were your “destined mate.” He nodded. “Sure, Malfoy.”

Draco led him towards the opposite corner of the room, and erected a privacy ward that was similar to the one that had separated Malfoy from the bedazzled people earlier with a few slashes of his wand. Then he faced Harry with a sharp look on his face. “Why does he calm down when you’re near?”

“Because I have a heart that’s already spoken for. I’m not affected by the Veela allure, and I’ve used it to soothe patients in the thrall of the potion before.”

Draco paused. Evidently that wasn’t the answer he’d expected. Finally, he frowned and shook his head. “Why is his attack so bad?”

“That’s hopefully something the Healers are going to find out. I actually haven’t someone have an attack this bad before.”

Draco immediately sneered. “Oh, you’re full of reassurance.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know that was my role here.”

Draco glanced away from him, his hands curling into agonized fists for a second. Harry sighed. He did pity the man. It couldn’t be easy to see the father you loved suffering so badly. But he didn’t have any different information for him. Harry only knew as much as he did because he’d helped treat transformed Veela before.

And if Malfoy’s mate wasn’t his wife, then that was a bigger concern than whether Draco was upset. Most of the other transformed Veela without immediately-available mates had drawn them to themselves within a few hours of being dosed with the potion. But it must have been close to twelve hours since Malfoy had had his dose, and there was no one here for him yet.

“Your father should probably be fine,” Harry said as gently as he could. “Healer Arcanus said that your mother isn’t his mate, which is unfortunate, and I’m sure it’ll cause several adjustments for him. But his true mate shouldn’t be that far away, or able to resist the call for much longer.”

“Mother and Father have been divorced for six months.”

Harry blinked. He hadn’t seen a hint of that in the papers. Then again, he went out of his way to avoid reading the _Prophet._ “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“What will his mate be like? How can we tell?”

Harry shook his head. “In the couple of years I’ve been helping people who’ve been transformed by the potion, there was no commonality. At least some of them were strangers the transformed person had never met before in their lives. Some of them were people they’d worked with or old ex-lovers.”

“And the new mate partnerships went…well?”

“As far as I can tell. I don’t keep up with the new relationships after they form.”

“So why are you here, Potter? Just helping out of the goodness of your heart?”

“Yes. I can help, so why shouldn’t I?”

Draco turned abruptly away, muttering something about, “So full of sickly sweet goodness I can’t _stand_ it.” Harry shrugged at his back and glanced over his shoulder. Malfoy was sleeping, it appeared, and Arcanus, who had one hand hovering above Malfoy’s chest in a sheet of blue light, glanced at Harry and gave him a reassuring nod.

“Your father should be fine,” Harry repeated, as gently as he could. “Why don’t you go home and get some rest? You must be tired.”

“The Healer said you’ve been here most of the night.”

Harry shrugged. “And I probably won’t be needed again, at least if your father’s mate is here by morning. I’m going home, too. Come on, Malfoy.”

Draco hesitated, glancing back at his father once, but in the end, accompanied Harry silently to the nearest Floo. He did clear his throat when Harry was reaching for the Floo powder, and Harry nodded at him.

“Thank you, Potter.” Draco mumbled that while looking away from him, as if he needed to be able to deny this later if it came up in a court case or something similar. “You probably saved his life.”

Harry smiled at him. “You’re welcome.”

And then came the welcome toss of the Floo powder into the fire, and the sight of his own cozy flat. Harry sent a quick owl to the Ministry to tell them that he wouldn’t be in today due to having attended a Veela case in St. Mungo’s last night, and bundled himself into bed.

One good thing about having irregular hours during his work since the war: it had taught him to get his sleep where he could. And he usually slept without dreams. Harry vanished into sweet and humming darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Oddly, he had dreamed last night, Harry thought as he turned around underneath the shower, gripping and shoving shampoo through his hair. He needed to get it cut. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d dreamed about that, actually. It seemed that he had his most mundane dreams after the weirdest days.

But instead, he had dreamed of a lingering, aching sense of sadness. And he had dreamed of a silver coffin being lowered into the earth and covered with roses.

Harry shook his head and ducked his head underneath the water. There had been that glass coffin in the book of Muggle fairy tales he’d read to his goddaughter Rose last weekend. Probably that had caused the damn dream.

Then he heard the sound of the Floo coming to life, and his name being loudly called. Harry rolled his eyes, stepped out of the shower, conjured the illusion of robes around himself and cast a Drying Charm on his hair, and sauntered out to meet the urgent call.

It was Arcanus, who relaxed a little when he spotted him, but not much. “Auror Potter. My apologies for calling you at home, but our patient has become worse.”

“Again?” Harry frowned. “All right, I’ll be right in. I can take another day off from the Aurors.”

“Thank you. I want you to know that we appreciate you.”

Arcanus was smiling at him in a way that probably meant “I” instead of “we,” and Harry smiled back, but in a temperate way. He appreciated Arcanus’s competence and wit, but he wasn’t interested in dating the man.

Or anybody. Ginny was still the first thing on his mind when he woke in the morning and the last thing when he went to sleep.

“Let me slip into another pair of robes—” _a real one_ “—and I’ll be right there.”

*

“Why am I free from pain only when you are here?”

Harry raised his eyebrows a little as he stepped into Malfoy’s part of the ward and sat down in the chair next to his bed. “They’re not sure. That’s what the Healers are working on.”

“I want _answers._ ”

 _At least he’s recovered enough to get the imperious voice back,_ Harry thought wryly. But most of him was taken up with worry for Malfoy, and why this particular case would be so different from the others that Harry had helped the Healers handle. He hadn’t even needed to _touch_ Malfoy this time. Instead, Malfoy had stopped screaming three minutes before Harry had come into the room, which would have been approximately when he came through the Floo.

“I don’t want to be dependent on you.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Harry said, as patiently as he could. “The Healers will sort out this odd reaction to the potion. And your mate should show up soon.”

“Mate. Like a _beast._ ”

Malfoy’s lip curled as he looked away, and Harry decided that he had to speak up. Besides, in a way, he was doing the man a favor. This was his future and his nature. Best if he got on with accepting it. “You say that like Veela are lesser than human beings,” Harry stated in a bright, inquiring voice.

“They _are._ ”

“Then why did you drink the potion to become one?”

Malfoy snapped back around in the bed. Already there was a flowing grace to his movements too great to be human, Harry thought, and he didn’t think it was his imagination that Malfoy’s hair had turned more silvery than blond or white. “I told you! To impress my wife.”

“The wife you divorced six months ago? What were you trying to make her do, come back to you as if she had no choice?”

Harry’s voice had grown harsh despite himself, and Malfoy snapped back again, a movement that reminded Harry of a startled bird jerking. “Draco talked to you.”

“Yes. So. Answer the question.”

“I was not trying to _force_ her to do anything. I was trying to show her that we belonged together.”

Harry sighed and scrounged up some sympathy. Just because he thought of someone with Veela allure as trying to enslave the other person didn’t mean everyone thought that way. “Look. She left you of her own free will, didn’t she?”

“I hope Draco never gave you _that_ much detail.”

Harry shook his head. “He just said that you were divorced. But if you’re the one who took the potion hoping to impress her, I’m going to take, oh, a wild guess and say that she was the one who initiated the divorce.”

Malfoy looked down at the white sheets over his legs, or maybe the fall of the white hospital robe they’d given him to wear. “Yes. She did.”

Harry nodded. “Fine. You have to let her go, Mr. Malfoy. You can’t cage her. Someone who wants to leave deserves to leave, and she gets to. It doesn’t matter what the person who’s left behind feels.”

“You sound as if you are talking about yourself and the Weasley girl.”

“That’s where I learned the lesson,” Harry said, smiling and trying to look as encouraging as possible, while Malfoy stared at him like he was mad. “I loved Ginny, but she fell in love with someone else. And she came and told me about it, and I could see that she was sincere. I had to let her go to live with myself.”

“Narcissa is not in love with someone else.”

Malfoy sounded almost petulant. Harry hid a grin, and leaned back in his chair. “But she might love the idea of divorcing you more than the idea of staying married to you.”

Malfoy jerked as if Harry had stuck a pin in him. Harry gentled his voice, because he knew what he had to say probably wouldn’t come across as anything but painful. “She might change her mind. Who knows? It’s something to hope for. I certainly hope that Ginny will change her mind and come back to me someday.” Her thought of an image of Ginny flying on her broom, her hair streaming behind her, beautiful as a phoenix’s wing.

Malfoy hissed, and Harry jerked back to reality to see that a silver feather had grown like a real pin through his bare arm. Harry touched it and watched the feather melt back down. He deliberately ignored the fact that his hand was only a few centimeters from the Dark Mark.

“But from my reading on the potion, once my bond with my mate is complete, I won’t want Narcissa anymore. I won’t—feel what I do for her now. And why in the name of Merlin am I telling _you_ this?”

Malfoy’s voice was low and painful. Harry met his eyes. “I’ll swear an oath to keep your secrets if you like.”

Malfoy stared at him, and finally burst out, “ _Why_?”

“Because I don’t think that someone who’s become a magical creature should have their secrets spread far and wide,” Harry said firmly. _Even if they’ve become a magical creature for an exceedingly stupid reason._ “Our society disadvantages you enough. I haven’t spilled the secrets of anyone else before, but I’m willing to swear a personal oath to you.”

Malfoy put his hand over his eyes. Harry assumed he was thinking and left him alone, but then Malfoy’s shoulders began to shake, and Harry leaned towards him. “Are you all right, Mr. Malfoy?”

Malfoy drew his hand off his face, and revealed that he wasn’t having a bad reaction to the potion at all, the way Harry had thought, but was _laughing._ Harry raised his eyebrows, and waited. Presumably the laughter would be explained sooner or later.

“You are too good to be true,” Malfoy gasped, and faced Harry. His eyes had altered towards silver more than blue or grey, but still showed an odd mixture of contempt and trust. “How often has our society disadvantaged _you_? And yet, you are willing to swear a magical oath to someone who was once a mortal enemy.”

“I think we’re past that.”

Malfoy lifted his left arm and shoved it directly at Harry’s face, so that Harry had to lean back a little. “How can you be past what _this_ represents?”

Harry held still for a long moment, until Malfoy was paying more attention to him than to whatever mixture of sensations the potion had brought on. Then he said, slowly and clearly, “I’m more than the scar on my face. I suggest you try to be more than the scar on your arm.”

Malfoy stared at him in clear shock. Then he glanced away.

“No one has ever said anything like that to me before.”

“They probably didn’t dare. You were good at practicing intimidation.”

Harry had meant it as a light tease, nothing more, but Malfoy bowed his head, his hair swishing around his face. “That’s one reason Narcissa left me. She said that I had sunk into a shell of being Lucius Malfoy, proper pureblood Death Eater, and didn’t know how to exist outside it.”

“And you took the potion because you thought _that_ would bring about a notable change, at least,” Harry said softly. “And probably show her that you were willing to change in the first place.”

Malfoy gave him a slightly aghast look. “Are you a Legilimens?”

“What?” Harry had to laugh. “I know you don’t know me, but you must have seen the expressions that I have trouble keeping off my face. I’m pants at Legilimency.”

“Then how could you know what I was thinking?”

Harry paused, but only because he hadn’t explained this to someone outside the Weasleys before, not because he hadn’t explained it. And, well, even if this ended up in the papers, so what? The _Prophet_ had already run story after story on his breakup with Ginny and the “sublime” life she was enjoying with Wallman. This would only be another of them.

“Because I’ve been in the same position as you. Hoping that if I made a deep change, a sudden one, it would bring her back.”

Malfoy stared at him with his lips slightly parted. Then he glanced away. “What change did you make?”

“I tendered my resignation from the Aurors.”

“But it didn’t stick.”

“No. Ginny came to me and told me that she didn’t want me to retire, that I was doing good work there, and that it wouldn’t work to bring her back, anyway. She didn’t fall in love with Ernest because he wasn’t me, or because he had a safer job than I did. She fell in love with him because he was himself.”

Malfoy was silent for a long moment, staring down at his hands. “But in this case, my wife did not fall in love with someone else.”

“No. But she did fall out of love with you. So changing yourself wouldn’t bring her back.”

Malfoy gave a chuckle as thick and bitter as the Veela potion itself probably was. “I wish I could have had the benefit of your advice before I took the potion.”

“So do I.”

Malfoy winced, probably because the potion was causing another of those surges of change, and glanced at Harry. “You wish that you had not had to save my life?”

“No. I don’t like the potion because I think almost everyone is taking it for stupid reasons. They look down on magical creatures, but they want to become one?” Harry shook his head. “They’re not thinking that through, of course. They just assume they’ll become sexy and romantic and seductive. And they _keep doing it_. Even though that potion killed its own inventor. Even though some of the people who take it keep declaring their support of laws that hamper Veela. Even though some people have died from it.”

“They have?”

Harry reached over and squeezed Malfoy’s hand quickly. “I don’t think you will. Your changes are odd, and not proceeding according to the usual schedule of the potion, but that’s probably because your allure hasn’t had a chance to call your mate yet. They must be incredibly far away.”

“But those who died—”

“Most of them kept trying to bond to one person when the potion was trying to tie them to someone else. They ignored and rejected what their own bodies and instincts were telling them. I don’t think you’ll have that problem.”

“No. Not since the one person I would have bonded with willingly has already rejected me.”

Harry frowned chidingly at Malfoy, and didn’t care if it _looked_ chiding. “A few people also died because they rejected the idea of having a mate entirely.”

Malfoy was silent, looking at Harry’s face as if he thought Harry might be lying and was attempting to see a sign. Harry focused on projecting calm and sincerity as hard as possible.

“You are—unexpectedly sympathetic to me.”

“I hate the way magical creatures are treated. It’s not personal, Malfoy.”

Malfoy hissed and closed his eyes for a second. Harry leaned forwards in concern. Malfoy hadn’t had any symptoms in long enough that Harry had begun to think he was past the worst of it, but that didn’t _sound_ like a groan from someone who was past the worst of it. “Malfoy? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. A churning in my stomach, and it felt as if my skin was trying to grow feathers but they were growing _underneath_ it.”

Harry stood up. “That’s not a normal symptom. I’ll get Healer Arcanus.”

He took a step away from the bed, and Malfoy _shrieked._

Harry swung back around at once. This time, Malfoy’s hair was actually standing on end as feathers wormed their way from under his hair. His hands were curled in on themselves, and he looked as if he were on the verge of sobbing. He bowed his head and trembled.

Harry surged back across the room and placed a hand on Malfoy’s cheek.

This time, it didn’t work. He could feel the skin writhing and changing shape beneath his touch, but not calming. And Malfoy turned his head, moaning, and snapped at Harry’s hand.

 _Shit._ That symptom, Harry _had_ seen before, when transformed Veela were convinced that their mates had tried to reject them. Malfoy’s mate was taking so long to get to him that his body had probably interpreted that as rejection.

Harry drew his wand. Most of the time, he could soothe someone affected by the potion with his touch alone, but there were desperate spells for desperate measures.

He quickly murmured the charm that he had discovered in an ancient book in the Ministry Archives—not much touched in these days when so few people cared about the rights or comfort of magical creatures—and Malfoy’s eyes abruptly flipped open. His skin calmed, and so did his hair. He stared at Harry as if he had never seen him before.

“Potter? What did you do?”

“Turned your own allure back on you,” Harry said. “You feel calm right now, right? And more inclined to consider yourself worthy of finding a mate and bonding to them?”

“I—yes.” Malfoy turned his head from side to side, spreading his arms as if surprised not to find them covered in blood and feathers, but kept glancing back at Harry. “I’ve never heard of a spell like that.”

Harry shrugged and put his wand away. “It isn’t used very often anymore, when even most Healers don’t specialize in treating people who are part-Veela and the like. It calms and focuses the mind, forces the allure back inwards. An allure makes someone else have a positive opinion of the Veela, so it can make the Veela have a positive opinion of themselves, too.”

Malfoy blinked and swallowed. Then he said, “I felt the spell. It felt like a cool _gale_ , not a breeze.”

“I never said it should be a breeze, Malfoy.”

“What did other Veela you’ve used the spell on say it felt like?”

“I’ve only used it once before,” Harry admitted. “And that was on a Veela who was dying and unconscious at the time. I don’t know what it felt like to her.”

“I thank you for sparing me dying and unconsciousness.” Malfoy sounded as if he was striving for an ironic, detached tone, and didn’t succeed. He ran his hands up and down his arms, staring at Harry the entire time. “You are…more than remarkable, Auror Potter.”

“Er. Thanks?” Harry blinked and scratched the back of his neck. “Anyone who knew the spell could have done the same.”

“I suspect that being able to master a charm to turn the Veela’s allure back on him is no more common than being able to resist the allure in the first place.” Malfoy’s voice was soft and warm, and his eyes had a silverier glint than before. “Thank you, Auror Potter.”

Harry concealed a little sigh. Sometimes Veela whose mates were long in getting to them, or who were being stubborn about bonding to the person their Veela nature had chosen, tried to slide him into the slot. It looked like Malfoy was heading down the same road.

But confronting him about that so soon after a bout of mate-rejection wouldn’t be a good idea. Harry changed the subject instead. “What do you hope for from your eventual mate, Mr. Malfoy?”

Malfoy shuddered a little and said, “Don’t call me that.”

“All right,” Harry said, baffled. “What would you like me to call you?”

“Lucius.”

Harry dithered for a moment, because it might mean that Malfoy saw him more firmly as the mate he would have to bond to eventually, and that wouldn’t be a good thing. Harry knew very well that no good came from interfering in a Veela bond. Finally, he nodded. “All right. What do you hope for from your eventual mate, Lucius?”

Malfoy leaned back on the pillows and closed his eyes suddenly enough that Harry wondered if he had fainted, or needed the sleep. But then Malfoy’s voice came out, soft and thoughtful. “Someone who would appreciate me for what I am. Someone who could offer me compassion and see past the scar on my arm. Someone whom I could benefit.”

“I’m sure that last part will be true, at least. Almost everyone I know would be thrilled to bond to a Veela.”

“Even if they were already married? In love?”

“Those situations aren’t _easy._ But yes, I’ve seen them work out. Even someone who has to divorce their spouse usually knows there’s a reason that the Veela chose them. And people have such a romanticized view of the Veela bond, they believe they’re signing up for endless love and coddling.”

Malfoy abruptly chuckled. Harry jumped, because he didn’t think he could remember hearing a _carefree_ laugh from Malfoy before. “But you don’t believe that,” Malfoy said, opening his eyes a little.

“According to Healer Arcanus, I’m not a very romantic person.” Harry found himself smiling back. It _was_ good to see Malfoy feeling better. “But more than that, I think any kind of relationship will have its challenges. With a Veela, the challenges are different, but not nonexistent.”

“What are the ones you’ve seen?”

“Almost all the result of that romanticized view.” Malfoy made an impatient gesture at the chair beside the bed, and Harry realized that he’d been standing up with his wand out since he cast the spell that turned Malfoy’s allure back on him. He flushed a little and sat down, while Malfoy watched him with more attention than the motion deserved. “People who think they should never argue, and who are devastated when they do. People who want only certain features of the Veela, and don’t realize that others need to come out, too. People who expect to be the spoiled one in the relationship, always taken care of, and don’t realize the Veela needs some of that, too.”

“I would _like_ to take care of my mate.”

“Yes, Veela usually do,” Harry said, ignoring the way that Malfoy’s eyes glinted at him. Sooner or later his true mate would show up, and he would stop trying to slide Harry into that place. If he was in less pain from his own stupidity right now, then he would already have seen all the ways Harry wouldn’t suit him.

Malfoy sucked in a deep, pained breath. Harry reached out and put his hand on Malfoy’s arm, this time deliberately covering the Dark Mark. “Are you all right, Lucius?”

Malfoy’s eyes fluttered. He turned towards Harry, and sagged a little, as if someone had taken out the steel pole that he usually had shoved up his arse. “Yes, I am now. Please. Keep touching me like that.”

Harry blinked as he stared at Malfoy, although the git didn’t open his eyes to look back. This was—weird. Most of the time, when transformed Veela tried to bond with him because their mate was late in getting there, they didn’t have this kind of reaction. This bone-deep relaxation and soft song that was boiling up around Malfoy at the moment from deep in his throat, the way that Malfoy seemed to _need_ Harry to call him by his first name, and the reaction to—

_He flinched when I thought he was stupid. When I thought that he should have rejected me._

Malfoy arched and made a little pained noise. Harry raised his free hand to stroke Malfoy’s hair, and Malfoy pushed into the touch. Harry thought for a moment about what would happen if his heart was free and he could bond to Malfoy.

Malfoy _gasped._ He opened his eyes and stared at Harry, and there was a light shining on them slantwise that didn’t come from anything in the room. “Whatever you’re doing,” he breathed, his voice thick. “Keep doing it.”

“Feels good?” Harry asked, his voice as detached as he could come up with.

Malfoy blinked a little. “It felt better just a moment ago. What happened?”

_I withdrew myself emotionally._

And Malfoy, even if he was a Legilimens, presumably wasn’t reading Harry’s every thought and emotion, especially during the times when he had his eyes closed. _Shit._

“What are you doing?” Malfoy moved his head restlessly on the pillow. “For a moment, it felt as if I was soft and warm and drifting without pain, and now some of the pain is coming back again.”

“What makes you think I had something to do with it?”

Malfoy snapped his head around again the way he had before, staring at Harry with those glittering eyes. “I know you did,” he said. “The tone of your voice says you did. What is going on?”

Harry took a deep breath. All his brave words about living with a Veela mate bond and leaving previous commitments if that was what the Veela needed were coming back to haunt him now. He swallowed and said, “I think I might be your mate.”

Malfoy froze, in a way that Harry doubted he could have before the potion. It was a bird-like stillness, not a human-like one. He stared at Harry with his body on the edge of trembling but just prevented from it, and silver feathers spread in a smooth cloak down his neck and chest, presumably continuing under his hospital robes.

“Why do you say that?” Malfoy whispered.

“You were encouraging me in intimacies, like calling you by your first name, that I doubt you would have without the potion,” Harry said, keeping his voice as calm he could. Detached would hurt; warm might put Malfoy in a position he didn’t want to be in. “And when I thought about you in a negative way—or about my ex-girlfriend—you started to have a bad reaction. Even thinking about you less warmly than I did is enough to produce that.” He sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Why is that?” Malfoy’s hand reached out and slid up Harry’s arm to his shoulder. It was on cloth all the way, which Harry was grateful for. He didn’t know what might happen if they touched him skin to skin right now—at least, with Malfoy initiating the touch. None of the Veela who had thought Harry might be their mates had ever been _right_ about it. “Do you still hate me for what happened during the war?”

“No. It’s because I know that you took the potion hoping to impress Mrs. Malfoy, so you would much rather have someone else as a mate than me. Probably a woman. And my heart is given to my ex-girlfriend, so I don’t have anything left for you.”

Malfoy recoiled from him, snatching his hand back. The silver feathers turned and started growing inwards towards his eyes again. And now there were _thorns_ curling out from under his fingernails, something else Harry had never seen before, not even with Veela trying to reject their mates.

Harry grabbed Malfoy’s hands, heedless of the thorns sinking into his flesh. “Lucius!”

The thorns vanished, dissipating into a few dark drops of mist, but the feathers kept growing. Malfoy tossed his head back and panted, “You don’t want me—you don’t—”

“Auror Potter, what is going _on_?”

Arcanus was standing at the end of Malfoy’s bed, staring at them with wide eyes. And presumably feeling no allure, Harry noted grimly. That had to mean Malfoy was focusing it on Harry, instead.

“Lucius has chosen me as his mate,” he said.

Arcanus’s jaw dropped for a second, and then he nodded briskly and raised a translucent shield down the middle of the ward like the one that had kept the allure-affected people away from Malfoy the other day. “All right. I’ll contact your superiors at once, of course, and inform them of what happened. I assume that you won’t be going home tonight. We’ll move you two to a private room.”

“Yes, that would probably be right,” Harry said, a little dazed.

He sneaked a glance at Malfoy, who was staring at him with eyes so wide that they seemed to take up most of his face. At least the feathers had stopped growing for the moment. Malfoy seemed poised, waiting, to see what would happen.

“It’ll be all right,” Harry said, instinctively, even though his heart was beating hard enough that it threatened to tear itself out through the cage of his ribs.

How _could_ it be all right? How could he give Lucius what he wanted, what he needed, when Ginny held his heart?


	3. Chapter 3

“This must be quite different from what you imagined would happen.”

“No different from what you had to imagine, I’m sure,” Harry murmured, looking around the room that Healer Arcanus had moved them into. It was a small, bare place, or had been, but Harry had changed the color of the walls and floor to a soothing blue that he knew from past experience with transformed Veela helped calm their nerves. He hoped it would work on him, too.

There was a small table in the room, for the meals he would share in private with Lucius; a pair of beds, each with simple white sheets and a few pillows; a door that led to the bathroom and another that led to the cupboard holding clothes Harry had retrieved from his flat and Lucius had had sent over from the Manor; and a small bookshelf with the books they’d both chosen. Harry sighed and sat down heavily on the chair next to the shelf, watching Lucius approach him.

The minute they were in private, Lucius had gained enough strength to stand up for the first time since Harry had seen him, which just argued that Harry really was his mate. Seclusion was one of the Veela requirements for courting and mating, at least until the bond was strong enough that they could show their mates off in public without worrying they’d be stolen. Lucius must have relaxed and decided that no one was going to take Harry from him.

Now he knelt down in front of Harry and rested his hands on the arms of his chair. His eyes were still silvery, but sharp, considering.

“Why would my Veela nature have chosen you?” he asked.

“I don’t think people understand much of that for natural-born Veela, let alone the transformed,” Harry murmured, staring into his eyes and trying to think about the last time he had let someone who wasn’t Ron or Hermione this close. He honestly couldn’t remember. “But I can tell you my theory.”

“Please.” Lucius tipped his head to the side, a motion that Harry noticed drew attention to his collarbone and slender throat. “I love to hear you speak.”

Harry blinked, caught off-guard. It wasn’t like his voice was melting or musical. But he shrugged a second later. “I think it’s because your Veela nature has been through a shock. It’s just come into existence. A transformed Veela is caught off-guard, and searching for the one person who will make them feel most comfortable and secure. For you, that was me. I don’t know why. Perhaps just because I was there and was able to stop the pain.”

“You disappoint me.”

Harry breathed out slowly, ignoring the jolt of pain in the center of his chest from his own side of the forming bond. He should have known this was coming. Lucius was still a Malfoy, changed by the potion or not. “Oh?”

“A comfortable, secure relationship?” Lucius leaned a little nearer. “I hoped that it would be more _exciting._ ”

Harry swallowed, and felt the edges of Veela allure touching him, like the brush of feathers, for the first time since he was fourteen. He closed his eyes, and Lucius stroked his face, tracing down along the line of his chin and jaw.

“Perhaps it still can be.” Lucius sounded almost as if he was talking to himself. “You are a wonder, Harry Potter.”

“Okay?” Harry didn’t mean his voice to come out so high-pitched, but there it was.

“But I am making you nervous.” From the sound and the feel of the allure, Lucius was standing up and backing off. “Perhaps you can come and sit close enough that we can touch, while you tell me about your last relationship.”

Harry opened his eyes and licked his lips nervously. He didn’t _want_ to betray Ginny—

Lucius hissed at him, his wings appearing for a second and flaring out of his back.

Harry stared at him pointedly. “You aren’t in pain right now,” he said. “You just don’t like me thinking about her. And I need to think about her, and work through my own feelings, if I’m going to tell you about her.”

The very thought made him want to curl up protectively around himself, the way he would have if someone had kicked him in the groin. This was going to be—difficult.

But Lucius didn’t want to hurt him. And if he was right about the formation of the bond, then Harry would have to do _something_ about his love for Ginny.

He’d just never thought he would have had to.

“Come, Harry.” Lucius was speaking gently, his hand extended. “Come sit with me.”

The only choice where they could sit side-by-side was one of the beds, and Harry knew it. He swallowed to contain his own nervousness and stood up, taking the hand. Beads of warmth slid up his arm and lodged themselves in his shoulder, and spread out in a long flutter that made his muscles relax.

“Wow.” Harry darted a glance at Lucius. “Is that an echo of what you felt when I touched you? That’s—really nice.”

Lucius smiled smugly and drew Harry further towards him. “Come with me.”

Harry sat down on the nearer of the two beds, and Lucius sat beside him. He leaned his face against the side of Harry’s neck and inhaled deeply, and Harry didn’t flinch. He’d expected something like this, having seen the way other Veela behaved with their mates. He expected Lucius to continue nuzzling, essentially preening, him for a time.

But instead, Lucius gave a huff and drew away. Harry blinked at him. “What?”

Lucius looked more human at the moment, his eye dark grey with frustration. “You feel nothing of the allure at all, do you?”

“I felt it a minute ago.”

“But I am projecting it as hard as I can at you, and you are not responding.”

“How terrible that you’ll have to work for it instead of me just falling into your arms int a swoon.”

That made Lucius bare his teeth. Harry bared his back. The standoff held for a moment, and then Lucius gave a soft laugh and raised his hand.

“Courting you is nothing like courting Narcissa was for me.”

Harry did his best to ignore the pain that stuttered down the center of the bond. It might have been Lucius’s pain or his, and he honestly didn’t think he could separate them at this point. “Why don’t you tell me about that?”

“If you promise me to be honest about your relationship with Weasley.”

Harry nodded and turned so that he could see Lucius’s face. “I will. Please tell me.”

Lucius nodded. He had one arm curled around the middle of Harry’s back, but he also smoothed his other hand up and down Harry’s left arm as he spoke. “All right. I noticed her first in school, and I thought she was beautiful. I also noticed that although she was soft-spoken, she could defend herself. That was something I wanted. Not someone who slunk into the shadows and told no one what she was doing.”

Harry blinked. “Is that in reference to someone specific?”

“Andromeda Tonks. She didn’t rebel against her family openly, not until after she’d married that—” Lucius paused for a long moment. “Muggleborn.”

“Thank you.” Harry didn’t think he should have to thank people for being decent, but on the other hand, it was enough of a struggle for Lucius at the moment, and he would do better with encouragement.

“I had no idea that you ever had an interest in Andromeda,” Harry added. He couldn’t picture it. Andromeda was a formidable woman, but Harry had only known her as someone who helped the Order of the Phoenix and spoke up for Muggleborns and had accepted a werewolf as a son-in-law. This shy teenager Lucius was talking about had no place in the image.

“I was looking among all the eligible young women near my age for a wife, and she was a Black. Of course I considered her.”

“Pureblood young women.”

“Yes.” Lucius paused. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”

“I can let the past go,” Harry said evenly. “If you start bringing up blood purity now, or lament people who oppose it, then I’ll have to remind you that your _mate_ is a half-blood.”

“Such a beautiful one.” Lucius turned to face him directly, lifting his hands to tilt Harry’s face back and forth. Harry was also sure that he was once again feeding the allure out, but by now, blocking it was second nature for Harry.

“My mother was still Muggleborn,” Harry said right back to him. “And she was the one who really defeated Voldemort, not me. At least the first time.”

Lucius dropped his chin as if burned. “Must you mention his name?”

“Must you pretend that my being your mate means that I’m not who I actually am?”

They stared at each other in tense silence, and then Lucius jerked his chin down. “We were—speaking of our past relationships.”

Harry would take it as the peace offering it was, for now. He had meant what he said, both about forgiving the past and about not tolerating it if Lucius thought he could somehow make Harry swallow blood purity nonsense. “If you wanted someone who stood up for herself, then I’m surprised that you didn’t court Bellatrix.”

Lucius spluttered, and then drew himself up and said with immense dignity, “I will forget that you said that.”

“I won’t. I want to know why you didn’t.”

“Even then, she was mad.” Lucius shuddered a little, and Harry felt a tug on the bond in the center of his chest. He reached out and gently stroked his hand down Lucius’s cheek. Lucius sighed and leaned against him. “Narcissa was what I was looking for. I admired her will, her determination, her beauty, and the fact that she didn’t have her head turned solely by my wealth and prestige. She’d grown up with that kind of thing herself.”

Harry just nodded. Andromeda had told him a few things about her childhood that made him doubt the “wealth” part, but it was true that genteel poverty was still a lot better than what many people in the wizarding world dealt with. “All right. How long did it take you to convince her to marry you?”

“Three months.”

Harry snorted. “Okay. And you love her still. I understand that.”

“I wanted to be with her,” Lucius said quietly. “I took the potion because I thought I would be.” He reached up to cradle Harry’s face again, with just one hand this time. “But I cannot say I _regret_ what has come of my choices. Not truly.”

Harry felt himself flush bright red. He cleared his throat and nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”

“And your Weasley.”

Harry ignored the tone on the last name. “She was someone who had gone through some of the same things I had. Someone who _knew_ what it was like to be possessed by that bastard, which not many people did.” He eyed the man who had been responsible for that possession.

Lucius blew air through his nostrils. “I am sorry.”

“It would mean more if you said it to her.”

“I will, if you want me to.”

Lucius looked like he was about to charge into battle. Harry nodded. “Fine.” He ignored the voice in his head, which sounded like Hermione’s, saying that Lucius would have apologized before this if he was a good person. Yes, he would have and he should have, but they were dealing with limitations and the situation as it stood, not as it should have been. “And she was beautiful, and she was brave, and bold, and a great Quidditch player.”

“That mattered to you?”

“Being a pureblood mattered to you?”

Lucius twisted his head a little. “I am well-served for having wished for someone who was determined,” he murmured. “But tell me more about your relationship with her.”

Harry sighed. “We dated for a few months at Hogwarts in my sixth year. Then I broke up with her when I went—hunting to destroy the artifacts that were keeping You-Know-Who alive.”

“I held the diary.” Lucius’s voice was soft. “I know very well what a Horcrux is, Harry.”

Harry nodded once. “Maybe I was stupid to break up with her, but I didn’t feel I could share the information about the Horcruxes with her the way I did with Ron and Hermione. And so we led our seventh years apart. She stayed at Hogwarts and was brave, while I ran around on a quest I didn’t understand half the time.”

Lucius was quiet for long moments. Then he said, “That doesn’t explain to me why you are still stuck on her now. A few months’ relationship when you were sixteen…”

“We got back together after the war, of course. She was a heroine in her own right, and she knew exactly what she wanted to do.”

“Play Quidditch for the Holyhead Harpies.”

“I didn’t sneer about Narcissa, Lucius. I’m going to ask you not to sneer about Ginny.”

After long moments, Harry more felt than saw Lucius nod his head. Harry nodded back. “She wanted to do what she wanted to do because _she_ wanted it. I wanted to be an Auror, but that was something I felt as if I had to do, because all I’d really known was chasing Dark wizards. I didn’t make the decision on my own. I had it made for me because of my history, you could say. She had that will I wanted to have.”

“So you admired her.”

“Yes. And she was one of the few people who didn’t go after me for my fame and my wealth, not when she’d known me since she was ten years old. A lot like the traits that you valued in Narcissa. She was _honest_ , and she accepted it when I told her I liked men as well.”

“Ah. I had been wondering why you seemed so accepting of a male mate.”

Harry shrugged a little. “I haven’t seen the Veela bond work yet to mate two utterly incompatible people. Of course, I’ve only worked with transformed Veela, not the ones who were born that way.”

Lucius touched his arm in a caress, and something that might have been the allure floated around Harry again. “Tell me more about why you feel you cannot love someone else.”

Harry faced Lucius. He had to say this in such a way that it wouldn’t hurt Lucius or feel like a rejection, and yet still in a way that acknowledged the reality which lay between them.

“She was honest until the end. She told me when she fell in love with someone else—suddenly, passionately. That’s just the way she is.” Harry clenched his hand in the sheets for a moment, ignoring the way that Lucius reached towards it and then stopped, as if he would prefer that Harry was touching him. “Combine that with the way she didn’t care about my fame and the way she knew me from the inside out, and where am I going to _find_ someone like that again? I don’t deserve her, I know that, but—”

Lucius gave a displeased snarl, his eyes locked on Harry. Harry blinked and shut up. Lucius bent towards him, his eyes glowing with the silvery sheen that meant he was going full Veela.

“Please do not talk to me again about you not _deserving_ Weasley,” Lucius murmured. “I am not pleased to hear you telling me that my magic somehow chose a mate with something inferior about him.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “It’s more about Ginny’s superiority than my inferiority.”

“Have you tried to find someone else who would not care about your fame? Have you sought out one of the multitude of honest, determined people who exist in the world?”

“No. I was hoping Ginny would change her mind.”

Lucius gave him a light shake. “Have you dated anyone in the years since her?”

“No.”

Lucius’s face went oddly blank, while the bond in Harry’s chest tugged again. “Have you shared a bed with anyone since her?”

Harry’s face burned for a second. “No.”

Lucius stared at him in incredulous disdain, and then closed his eyes. “Well, at least I need not worry about you being faithful,” he muttered.

“I’ll be faithful to you because it’s what you need,” Harry said instantly. “No, you don’t have to worry about that.”

“The transformation opened new corridors in my mind for my thoughts to rush down,” Lucius murmured. “I did not wish to use them, because that would mean fully accepting the transformation and my role in it. But now…”

He tilted Harry’s head up with the slight pressure of his fingers, and Harry caught his breath again. The silvery sheen had given way to a deeper, brighter grey, blending the best of the human and Veela colors.

Harry had never thought to himself before that Lucius Malfoy was beautiful, but now, he could see it.

“This bond is also about what _you_ need,” Lucius murmured. “And I think that is not to keep hoping and waiting for the return of a woman who chose someone else.”

Harry opened his mouth to object to that characterization of Ginny—it made it sound like she was at fault—and Lucius kissed him.

The sensation started out like a buzz on his lips, and then traveled up through his throat and towards the heart of him. Harry caught his breath, and found himself floating. His head spun. Warmth wrapped around him, and the soft song he had heard rising up from around Lucius once before curled into his bones.

He lifted his hands and cupped Lucius’s cheeks. Lucius might have laughed, but if so, it wasn’t enough to disturb the perfect heat of the kiss between them. He bore Harry gently backwards, and Harry went with it, because—

Lucius knew what he needed, even if that was because of the bond blossoming between them rather than because he was a naturally empathetic person. He wouldn’t press Harry further than he was ready for, or into a situation that he wasn’t ready for.

Harry landed on soft sheets, and Lucius moved so that he was arched over Harry, not straddling him. Harry had the tumbling thought that this position must be awfully hard on his mate’s neck, and then Lucius kissed him hard enough to chase the thought away. Lucius’s hand was on Harry’s thigh, gently massaging, making him shift and raise his hips.

He didn’t know what he wanted. Not a touch to the cock, not yet, but something else.

Lucius found it, letting his hand rest between Harry’s thighs without moving higher. Harry caught his breath. The sensations that danced through him burned like heat lightning, and he didn’t think it was all the bond.

It was five years since he’d had sex. It was—there weren’t words for the reawakening of his pleasure, like a limb that had gone numb so long ago he’d got used to walking without it.

Lucius drew back at last, staring down at him. Harry panted, staring upwards. Lucius touched his cheek, the side of his neck, his thigh again, and said, “I think that you needed this even more than I thought.”

Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t feel the sense of betrayal that he’d assumed he would if he ever kissed someone other than Ginny. Was that strange?

Or was it that he never would have felt the sense of betrayal all that keenly, but his years of _telling_ himself that he would had convinced him?

“Have you spoken with Weasley in the last five years?” Lucius’s hand moved slowly, hypnotically, down his side.

Harry swallowed and shook his head. “She didn’t want to.”

“Then I am not surprised that you froze the past into an idealized image, and that your pining was stronger than your reality.”

Harry lay there, quiet, thinking about it. Then he said, “But there must have been some truth about that—I mean, that I was really in love with her and couldn’t love someone else. Or why would I have been able to resist the Veela allure and help people transformed by the potion?”

“I seem to remember that I saw you resist an Imperius Curse cast by the Dark Lord himself. Your incredible will, and your commitment to helping people, could have had nothing to do with it?”

Harry blinked. “I didn’t think that, because strong-willed people still succumb to Veela allure.”

“And strong-willed people still succumb to the Imperius Curse.” Lucius’s gaze was more than satisfied as he ran it down Harry’s body. “The strength of his will is only one more thing that is extraordinary about my mate.”

Harry blinked, then laughed. “You don’t have to sound as though you’re solely responsible for it.”

“I am not, but I am responsible for appreciating you as you should be appreciated.”

Lucius leaned in and would have claimed another kiss, but Harry managed to raise his hand and stop him. Lucius’s tongue licked out to touch his palm, of course, and Harry shuddered in response, but kept his voice from turning too breathy. “Have you thought about how your family’s going to react to this?”

“Narcissa, unfortunately, is no longer my family.”

Harry caught his breath through the jealousy that heated his belly for a second, and said, “But Draco?”

“Draco will accept it because I am happy and this happened long after his mother and I parted.”

Harry wasn’t so sure about that, but he did think that Draco was probably going to be more upset about Lucius’s choice of mate than the fact that he had one.

“And yours?”

Harry shifted a little harder into Lucius, for the acceptance that the Weasleys _were_ his family. “Hermione will be happy that I’m finally moving on from Ginny, I think. She’s buried me for years in psychological literature about how it’s unhealthy to stay caught up in a crush for too long. Ron and the others are going to have a harder time. They still hate Malfoys.”

Lucius snorted. “We have done nothing to them since the war.”

“But you did plenty before it,” Harry said dryly. “And I didn’t say they would hate you forever. Just that they had reason to think of it in different terms.”

“I will go with you to meet them or stay behind you, as you decree,” Lucius said. “But I will not tolerate them hurting you.”

“They wouldn’t beat me up or curse me. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I meant emotionally, and you well know it.”

Harry sighed. “But you can’t protect me from that forever or in all ways. Can you accept that? Because things will be more than awkward if you can’t.”

“Yes. But the harm that I can guard you from, I will.”

Harry kissed the center of Lucius’s hand that rested on his shoulder, and sat up. He kept his eyes closed, although he knew that wouldn’t prevent Lucius from feeling what he was down the bond.

His life was cracking, falling to pieces around him. He had always imagined it would if and when he finally began to think that Ginny was never coming back to him and he might be with someone else.

But strangely, the cracking and falling to pieces felt as if it was the process of hatching from an egg, not crumbling like stone.

He—might be all right. He’d heard words spoken against Ginny, and he hadn’t flown into an immediate rage. He’d been accused of idealizing the past, and he’d accepted and considered those words on their own merits instead of denying them.

He had been kissed by someone else, and it had _felt good._

The world might be all right.

“More than all right,” Lucius breathed into his ear.

Harry leaned against him, and went on hatching.


	4. Chapter 4

“It’s outrageous that you’re my father’s mate.”

“It was a surprise to both of us,” Harry said quietly. The anger in Draco’s face was something that he expected to face from his best friends in a few hours’ time. Well, maybe not Hermione. Like he’d told Lucius, she would probably be more relieved that he’d begun to realize what his frozen image of Ginny really was. “He didn’t choose me to make you expire in outrage. It just happened.”

“It should have been my mother.”

That sent a swift bolt of pain through Harry, but less than he’d seen other Veela mates suffer when their Veela had expected to bond to someone else. Harry nodded. “I know. And I know Lucius was expecting it to be.”

Draco leaned forwards. He was sitting in the chair next to the bookshelves, his hands clasped between his legs, but the look on his face said that was probably happening to keep him from punching Harry. “You don’t have the right to call him by his first name.”

“He said that he did. And his opinion matters more to me than yours.”

Draco stared at him in silence for a long moment. Then he said, “So you don’t care at all about getting along with me.”

“I never said that. I said that he expects me to call him by his first name, and I want to.”

“And your vaunted devotion to Weasley that supposedly made you able to help any transformed Veela? I suppose that was a front?”

“No, but my resistance to the allure had a lot more to do with my own will than my love for Ginny.” A hiss sounded from behind them, where Lucius and Narcissa were talking. Harry ignored it. “I was essentially offering up my devotion to someone who didn’t exist, a woman who was strong and honest enough to tell me when she’d fallen in love with someone else, but also so fickle and weak that she would turn back to me just because I pined after her.”

Draco blinked. “That sounds like the kind of thing my father convinced you of.”

“He was the one to bring it up, but it’s something I’m working through.”

And the more Harry thought about it, the more examples he found. Ginny hadn’t wanted to talk to him after she fell in love with Wallman. If they had been friends, or if she had thought she could trust him to _remain_ friends, she would have.

He hadn’t seen her in five years, except in photographs in the _Daily Prophet_ taken after her Quidditch games. How did he know what she was like now? If she was still the same person? If he would be in love with her even if she came back to him?

It seemed so simple to Harry now, that he’d been dwelling on an idealized vision. But he’s also insisted for five years that Ginny was the only person he wanted to love, and his friends had believed and supported him. It had even seemed true, given that most people couldn’t fight Veela allure.

On the other hand, if Ginny had claimed his heart, Harry couldn’t have come to an accord with Lucius so soon.

So he’d been fooling himself. Well, there were worse things. He would accept that he had been a fool, and go on.

“You wouldn’t go back to Weasley if she walked into this room right now?”

Harry took a deep breath and shook his head. “It would be difficult.” Another hiss from behind him, and this time Harry granted Lucius a slight dip of his head in acknowledgment, but that was all. “But no, I wouldn’t.”

“Why _not_? She was you dream girl.”

“It’s everything to do with me, nothing with her. I was lying to myself about how invested I was in her.” Harry snorted. “Probably trying to have an excuse not to date someone else, the way Hermione sometimes urged me to do.”

For the first time, Draco looked scandalized. “You haven’t dated _anyone_ else since her?”

“No.”

“Then how can—how can you _possibly_ be good enough for my father? If you’ve been isolating yourself all these years?”

Harry blinked, and struggled to contain it, but he felt the laughter bubbling up in him nonetheless. “Excuse me,” he said. “Are you arguing that I’m not _sexually experienced_ enough for your father?”

Draco promptly turned pink. “I didn’t say those words.”

“You implied them.” Harry bowed his head and gave in to the chuckles for a second. He didn’t want to do it too long. He did want to take his place in Lucius’s life as smoothly as possible. But the scandalized look on Draco’s face—as if it was so much worse to speak the words than to imply them—was too funny.

When he straightened back up, it was to see Draco eyeing him in resentment. “I could think of so many more people who would be better as his mate.”

Harry shrugged. “Yeah, so could I.”

“Then why stay with him?”

“You don’t know much about what happens when someone tries to separate Veela from their mates, do you?”

Draco folded his arms. “If the mate does it himself—”

“The Veela dies. And the mate, if the bond has been sealed.”

Draco stared at him, looking more than a little sick. “But how can you _agree_ to this? My father is older than you. He could die before you do and deprive you of decades of life.”

Harry thought about pointing out that he was an Auror and that might mean he would die long before Lucius, but this didn’t seem like the right moment for it. Instead, he kept his voice as soothing as he could. “I’m agreeing to it because this is what happened. The bond is there, and I don’t want to reject it and die, or cause Lucius to die. This isn’t the way I pictured my life turning out, of course. But it’s not the way your father pictured his life turning out, either. There’s no reason to fuck everyone over for the sake of spite.”

Draco sat back slowly, looking as if Harry had given him a huge lemon to suck on. “I know people who would.”

Harry shrugged. “I’m not one of them.”

“Funny. Until now, I would have said that you were.”

“You never really knew me,” Harry said mildly, and left it at that. Forgiving Lucius and talking to him in depth about their past was one thing. He didn’t have to have that kind of relationship with Draco, and frankly, he thought it would make them both uncomfortable. If Draco could decide that Harry hadn’t changed, despite Harry’s years of work as an Auror and someone who helped magical creatures, a few words wouldn’t dent that belief.

Draco sighed and stared over Harry’s shoulder towards his parents. “They’re really never going to get married again.”

Harry blinked. _Oh._ Draco’s words were a lot more understandable, when he thought of them as the words of someone trying to cope with his parents’ divorce. Harry nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“I knew Mother didn’t love him for a while and wanted to leave him. I never expected Father to be the one who would make a choice that would…” Draco trailed him off.

Harry didn’t need him to say anything else. They sat in a silence that was brittle but not uncomfortable until Narcissa gathered her robes around herself and nodded.

“We all have to live with the consequences of the choices we made,” she said, and swept past Harry, turning a coldly-glittering blue eye on him. Harry sat there and let her do it. He didn’t have many strong feelings for her. If she really had regretted leaving her husband and longed to come back to him, she would have done it before Lucius took the potion.

And he knew that she wasn’t a threat to what he had with Lucius, any more than Ginny was.

Draco rose to sweep along behind his mother, giving Harry an unreadable look. Harry shrugged at him and turned to regard Lucius as the door shut behind the Malfoys.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Lucius said, and stared down at his hands for a moment, prompting Harry to get up and move over to sit beside him on the bed. “Narcissa said that I shouldn’t have taken the potion.”

“Well, I think the same way,” Harry had to point out.

“Despite the fact that if I had not, we wouldn’t be sitting here?”

Harry sighed and leaned on him. “I don’t want to reject the bond, Lucius. But you still could have died. You could have chosen a different mate who either didn’t reach you in time or who you decided not to accept. Or you could have had that allergic reaction like the inventor of the potion I told you about had. It’s not _inevitable_ that it would have worked out for the best.”

Lucius’s hand slowly stroked down his hair. Harry leaned harder against him. It was difficult to realize how much he’d missed this, simple human touch. Ron and Hermione would punch him on the shoulder and hug him whenever he wanted, of course, but that wasn’t the same as having a lover.

A mate.

“But you are committed to making it work out for the best now.” Lucius’s voice held a slight hint of uncertainty.

Harry pulled himself away, ignoring the tug in the center of his chest, and turned to face him. “Hit me with all the allure you have.”

Lucius stared at him, but did it. Harry felt the edge of a cool breeze touch him, and that tickling sensation like feathers on his jaw. It made him laugh, but that was all.

Lucius leaned back and stared at him harder. “What was your reason for having me do that?”

“Because I wanted to show you that I _am_ committed to having it work out for the best.” Harry stretched out his hand, but didn’t move it until Lucius took it. “Not seduced by your allure, not controlled by it into doing something I didn’t want.”

“But you wouldn’t have chosen me. Not of your own free will, not perfectly unconstrained.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “If that’s your definition of a good choice, then we’re both going to have to question most of the choices we ever made. Maybe I only chose Ginny because she was around me all the time and I’d known her for so long. Maybe I could only have a _perfectly free_ choice if I’d fallen in love with a stranger. You only looked among pureblood women when you were looking for a wife. What if the love of your life was a Muggleborn? But that’s not the way I think, Lucius.”

“What do you think, then?” Lucius was blinking slowly at him, his eyes shimmering slightly silvery.

“I don’t think there’s only one right and perfect choice, only one way it could have gone,” Harry said firmly. “I can’t think that, not the way I’ve lived. I survived that bastard’s attempts to kill me only with a tremendous amount of luck. I could have died at any point along the way—”

He yelped as Lucius abruptly grabbed him around the middle and tugged him close, letting his nose rest against Harry’s hair. “What are you doing?” Harry managed to choke out as he got his hands braced against Lucius’s shoulders.

“I don’t like to think about you dying.”

Lucius’s voice was low and muffled, as if he was fighting against his own embarrassment. Harry kissed his earlobe, and Lucius shivered. Harry smiled. It was good to see that, transformed Veela and formerly feared Death Eater or not, Lucius still had those little human reactions.

“I know. But my point is, there was nothing inevitable about the fact that I survived. Nothing inevitable about the way I won the war. People planned and hoped and dreamed, but that didn’t mean it was _fated._ ”

“There was the matter of you and a prophecy.”

“And do you think _anyone_ believed it would work out the way it did? That all the Horcruxes would be destroyed? That we’d find them in time, or even learn in time that they were what Vol—that bastard had used? Besides, that damn prophecy said nothing about me actually living even if I defeated him, or becoming an Auror, or falling in love with Ginny. Or falling in love with you, for that matter.”

“So you are saying—”

“That it’s not a matter of fate that we’re here. It’s a matter of chance, and luck, and you making a stupid decision, and me making a compassionate one.” Lucius flinched, and Harry rolled his eyes. “Choosing to take care of transformed Veela and giving a shit about magical creatures, Lucius. Not pity making me accepting the bond with you.”

He put his hands on either side of Lucius’s face and looked into his eyes. “I make my decisions about what I can live with. And when push comes to shove, I _chose_ to give up that idealized love I thought I had, and be with you.”

“Because my allure cannot affect you at all.”

Harry nodded. “I made a decision, and I want to live the life that’s in front of me. Not mourn the one I don’t have, forever.”

Lucius eyed him for a moment. Then he said, “I said I wanted someone determined and strong of will.”

“And I wanted someone bold,” Harry said, laughing a little as Lucius’s hand eased up his leg in response. “Not necessarily in that way.”

Lucius pulled his hand back at once. He didn’t seem upset, and the bond in the middle of Harry’s chest didn’t twang or pull the way he’d thought it would. It hadn’t when they slept in separate beds last night, either.

“Bold enough to come with me and meet my adopted family.”

Lucius’s breath caught deep in his throat, and for a moment, he looked sick, pensive, caught on the edge of refusing. Harry waited. All he could do was ask.

Lucius finally met his eyes and said slowly, “If you think they would welcome me into their home, then I would be delighted to go with you.”

Harry smiled. “I’ll Floo them tonight and ask.”

And that Lucius was ready to come out of seclusion this quickly meant that his possessiveness was no longer as fiercely aroused.

 _Other things can be more fiercely aroused,_ Harry thought, complacent, and accepted another kiss.

*

“I—of course, dear.”

That was what Molly had said when they’d spoken through the fire two nights ago. But now she stood by, staring, with a face full of strain, as Harry escorted Lucius through the door of the Burrow.

Arthur was sitting on the other side of the table, and he nodded stiffly to Lucius, his face unsmiling. Ron and Hermione sat on either side of him, and Bill and Fleur on either side of _them_ , with Victoire and baby Dominique playing on the floor. George hadn’t come, and Harry could rather understand that.

But Percy was there, and he stepped forwards to shake Lucius’s hand with the skill of a born politician. “Glad to welcome you to our home, Mr. Malfoy. Long thought this senseless feud could have been stopped. Practically no one even remembers how the Malfoys and Weasleys came to hate each other, anymore.”

Lucius’s glinting eye said _he_ remembered, but he gave a little half-bow of his head to Percy and shook his hand back. “Thank you, Mr. Weasley. I appreciate your welcome, and that your family’s hospitality could be extended to me despite all that lies between us.”

Harry let his gaze wander to the faces of the other family members while Percy was speaking. Good old Percy, determined to smooth everything over because of the boost that Lucius might give to his career in the Ministry.

Molly had stopped twisting her apron between her hands and looked relaxed now. Ron’s eyebrows were about to shoot off his face, if their current location was any sign, but Fleur seemed to be hiding a smile. Arthur and Bill both had their neutral faces on. Hermione regarded Harry with the approval of someone who was seeing all her cherished psychological theories come true.

And descending the stairs from the upper floor—

Harry swallowed air, and was glad that his voice sounded a little normal when it came out. “Hello, Ginny.”

“Hello, Harry.”

She looked nothing like the pictures of her in the _Daily Prophet,_ was Harry’s first thought. No, wait, it was more true that she looked nothing like the images in Harry’s head. He had always remembered some beautiful goddess who had diminished the light in his life when she broke up with him.

She was still beautiful. But she was a human, who gave him a welcoming smile and held out her hand, and Harry took it.

He didn’t think anyone else heard the growl that rattled out of Lucius’s throat in response. It was nearly subvocal. Harry stepped back, let Ginny’s hand drop, and stepped neatly on Lucius’s foot.

He stopped growling and looked constipated, although since he was a Veela he of course did it in a beautiful way. But the moment that might have crashed to the floor and burned was saved when Fleur stood up and came forwards.

“You are a true Veela,” she said to Lucius, surprise and the slightest of French accents tinging her voice. “I have met others, those transformed, and they do not let themselves grow into their heritage in such a way. But you have. You have embraced it. What is the cause?”

Other people were looking at Lucius with more interest now. Hermione asked the obvious question. “What do you mean? I thought people transformed by the potion were _all_ true Veela, at least if they survived the transformation.”

“There are different degrees of it.” Fleur eyed Lucius as if measuring him on an invisible scale. At least Lucius had dropped the constipated expression, and merely looked bored now, although the bond in the middle of Harry’s chest sang of nervousness. “They can go further along accepting the bond and accepting that they have changed, or they can rage against it and only accept a shallow version of the bond. Malfoy, he has gone deep.”

“Well, with the chance to have Harry, why wouldn’t he?” Ginny asked.

Again Lucius tried the subvocal growl, and again Harry introduced Lucius’s foot to the bottom of his boot. “Thank you, Ginny,” he said. “That’s nice of you to say.”

Ginny gave him a gentle smile. “It was never your fault, Harry.”

That reminded him of their last conversation, the breakup conversation where she had told him that she’d fallen in love with Wallman.

_It’s not your fault. It’s nothing you did. It’s just that Ernest is Ernest, and he’s the one I want to be with._

And suddenly, Harry thought he might know why Ginny was here. That he was bonded with Lucius argued that this was going to be a permanent commitment, at least for anyone who knew anything about the potion or the natures of Veela. Ginny no longer thought that he might be waiting to ambush her or lure her back into a relationship. He was safe now.

They could be friends again.

Harry smiled at her, and this time Lucius just laid a hand on his arm instead of growling. Harry leaned into his shoulder and said to more people than just Ginny, “Well, of course. I’m perfectly charming, and I _am_ the Chosen One. Who wouldn’t want to embrace the full depths of their Veela nature just to date me?”

“And bond with you,” Lucius added. “Don’t forget the bond.”

“It’s taking up too much of my attention for me to forget it.” Harry tapped the center of his chest and watched Lucius’s eyes soften and bleed human grey again.

“And you’re happy, dear?”

Molly sounded anxious. Harry turned to her with another smile. He knew why she had agreed to welcome Lucius into her home, despite the horrible things he had done during the war, and to Ginny at that. Harry was important to her. His _happiness_ was important to her. She had urged him to give up on Ginny because she thought his love and grief were making him unhappy, and only stopped when he said he didn’t want to.

“Yes,” Harry said, because it was true at the moment, standing in the home of his adopted family with his bonded lover, and he would work to make it true in the future. Relationships weren’t a worship session between a mortal and a god, or a goddess. They needed that work. “I am.”

*

“I’m glad that you finally saw the truth.”

Harry rolled his eyes at Hermione and passed her yet another clean plate to put away. He was drying, Ron was washing, and Hermione was putting away in the kitchen, which both gave Molly a chance to rest after cooking the huge meal she had and gave Molly and Arthur the chance to talk with Lucius. It was going to be necessary, these conversations, no matter how stiff, if they stood a chance of building a lasting peace.

“Yes, yes, you were right about my projection and my dissociation and the other thing. Totally right.”

“Different psychological terms, mate.” Ron grinned at him as he ran an ancient plate that had several chips in the rim beneath the soapy water. “Projection is when you slather your emotions all over someone else, and dissociation is when you go mental quiet-like.”

“Ron, that is _not_ what they mean.”

Ron stared at Hermione in a besotted way. Harry smiled. _If I can be a tenth as happy with Lucius as they are together, I’ll be happy for life._

_And I think I can._

“ _Anyway,_ ” Hermione said, dragging the conversation back where she wanted it to go, “I’m glad that you saw pining after Ginny was no way to live your life.”

“And you couldn’t have been pining _that_ much,” Ron added, “if you could move on in a few days.”

Ron saw to the heart of it, the way he did so many things. Harry held his eyes for a moment, and then nodded. “Exactly. I think I’d turned myself into this pining caricature in my head. That was what I did, pine for Ginny. It was a convenient reason to refuse dates and pretend I was a martyr.”

“But you did love her.” Hermione, soft and with a touch to his arm that nearly got in the way of Harry handing her a bowl.

“At one point,” Harry said, and rubbed vigorously at the huge wet platter Ron had just handed him. “I did. But how easy is it to love someone when you never see them, never hear from them, just pant after the idealized image in your head?”

“ _Mate_. She’s my _sister._ ”

Harry grinned at him. “Consider it revenge for all the times I walked in on you and Hermione in the Gryffindor common room after the war.”

Ron winced and whinged, but Hermione took over again, saying, “So what changed?”

“Someone who needed me for more than just a few hours, someone who could need me for _life_ , asked me to reconsider,” Harry said simply. “No one’s really done that since the war, you know, except for you two, and you have each other. Lucius didn’t have anyone who could do that for him. He and Narcissa got divorced months ago, and, well, I don’t know exactly what his relationship with Draco is like now, but it’s not so close that he could just depend on his son and never need anyone else.”

“It’s so like you to go from one committed passion to another.” Hermione frowned at him. “I still worry that you won’t be happy. Or that you had your will stolen by the allure.”

Harry snorted. “Have I been acting like it?”

“No, but it could be subtle. Or a different kind of allure than any I ever heard of. Fleur said that not that many transformed Veela fully embrace their nature. Maybe there are unusual gifts that come along with it.”

“Hermione, I love you, but you’re wrong sometimes,” Harry said gently. “I asked Lucius to hit me as hard as he could with the allure a few days ago, and nothing happened. Oh, I felt sensations like someone was tickling my throat with a wing, but that’s _it_. I can resist allure. I think I can be happy.”

“You don’t know?”

“You knew that you would be happy with Ron every single minute of the day, every day of the week, every week of the year?”

“No, but that’s different.” Hermione nibbled her lip, then abruptly dropped the bowl she was holding on the corner and flung her arms around him. “Oh, Harry, I’m happy for you, but I’m just so _worried._ ”

“She’s not the only one, either,” Ron added. “I mean, I’d hug you, too, but I doubt you want water all down your robes.”

Harry laughed and held the dripping platter away from Hermione so he could hug her with one arm. “I think it’s not perfect. I think we’ll probably fight a lot more than most Veela and their mates do, since a lot of them are people the Veela already knew or perfect strangers who don’t have the kind of history Lucius and I do. But yes, I think I can be happy with someone who puts my happiness first and who needs me.”

“Why would he?”

“Because he’s a Veela, and that’s what they do,” Harry said softly. “I’ve helped a lot of them over the past few years, Hermione. I never wanted to succumb to the allure, but I _did_ envy people for having someone who would put them first. That’s something it took me a long time to admit to myself, sure, that I wanted to be taken care of sometimes. Not _all_ the time. But that’s the great thing about being someone who’s _not_ affected by the allure. I can defend Lucius and pamper him when I need to, and he can do the same for me.”

Hermione sighed and finally pulled away from him, looking around for a second. Ron offered her a handkerchief, and Hermione gave a wet laugh and used it to wipe her face. “Thanks, Ron. Well. As long as you’re sure, Harry.”

“I’m sure. I want to see what happens.”

“That sounds like you, too,” Hermione muttered, in a voice without a lot of approval in it.

But she had clearly said what she felt she needed to say, and they went back to the dishes.

*

“I am sorry.”

Harry paused. He had left the kitchen to find that both Lucius and Ginny were missing from the table, and, well, he was sure they wouldn’t be in the same place. He had wanted to see if he could find a chance to talk to Ginny privately.

But it turned out that Lucius and Ginny were in the same place after all, on the narrow staircase. Harry stopped around the corner from them and wondered if he should say something to announce his presence.

Hearing the apology, though, he thought it would be best to let it play out. And, well, maybe he hadn’t _entirely_ conquered his addiction to sneaking around and trying to hear what people were saying.

“Sorry for what, exactly?” Ginny’s voice was cool.

“For causing you to be possessed by a Horcrux of the Dark Lord.”

Harry nearly choked. He hadn’t expected Lucius to be _that_ direct. He could feel, from the stunned silence that hung around them for a minute, that Ginny hadn’t, either.

Then she said, “Apology not accepted,” and proceeded up the staircase. Harry heard the sharp click of her shoes retreating, and the almost inaudible sigh that Lucius gave.

Harry stepped around the corner and embraced him.

Lucius turned to him with no surprise, which in turn was no surprise to Harry. The bond would have announced that Harry was there. “You are not upset that she didn’t accept the apology?” he murmured into Harry’s brow. For a moment, his lips passed over Harry’s scar.

Harry shook his head. “She has to make her own decisions, and for me, it’s enough that she accepted your presence here without fuss. That’s all we _can_ ask. For her first time being in the same room with me in five years, this didn’t go too badly.”

“That is true,” Lucius said, while the bond thrummed between them. “Perhaps she cares more about your happiness than whether or not I apologize.”

He sounded as if that was a foreign concept to him. Harry grinned up at him. “Can I give you something?”

“Of course, but why—”

Harry tugged Lucius sharply towards the back door of the Burrow that gave out on the garden, and Lucius went with him, almost stumbling. As they came out the door into the cool grey day, he was alert, shifting as though his wings were about to burst through his shoulder blades any moment. He seemed to assume Harry had sensed a threat.

Harry tugged him behind a tree that meant they would be out of sight from any casual glances through the windows—something he and Ginny had discovered not long after the war—and then kissed Lucius, deeply and passionately.

Lucius finally seemed to grasp what Harry had meant when he said he wanted to give him something, and melted against him with a soft croon. The warmth that crept over Harry was wonderful, but not seducing. He had never felt clearer-headed than when he reached down and unbuttoned the ice-blue robes Lucius had chosen to wear today.

Once he had Lucius’s cock in hand, long and smooth and itself warm, Lucius groaned, and his head went back, and the croon ceased. He looked entirely human as Harry began to stroke him.

Harry let his eyes wander over Lucius’s pale face as he did. Tight lines around the eyes and mouth as Lucius panted, his lips slightly parted. Handsome, but not supernaturally so. A face that could be kind or cruel, depending on what its owner said and thought and did.

_Like the rest of us._

Harry pressed closer to Lucius, no longer able to ignore the swelling in his own groin, and Lucius abruptly lifted a thigh and began to move it _exactly_ right without ever opening his eyes. Harry’s own surprised gasp mingled with the groans Lucius was still uttering, and he thought he saw a glint of smug silver under the lowered lids.

_Maybe not everything is exactly like the rest of us._

Harry had to twist his hand a little further than before to work it into place and stroke Lucius, and Lucius altered the pace and the height of his rubbing thigh without faltering. Harry breathed hard, jabbed his other hand down as he shuddered, and managed to cup Lucius’s bollocks just as his own pleasure overcame him.

He had forgotten what it was like to do this with someone else, to have heat pressing back against him and the sharp shocks of someone else’s climax shaking his body. And he had never done it with a man.

For the first time, this was pretty damn good, sudden and unplanned as it had been.

His own hand wet, Harry opened his eyes and found Lucius watching him again. His face was bright and fond, and full of wonder.

“You are generous simply because you can be,” Lucius breathed. “Kind because you can be.”

“Yeah, well, I _am_ the Chosen One.” Harry pasted a pompous expression on his face. “What would I be without those traits?”

“I can’t remember the last time I acted that way,” Lucius said abruptly. “Or interacted with someone who was that way. But I think I’d like to, from now on.” He reached up and cupped Harry’s chin, holding it still, letting their eyes meet. “I would like to try many new things, from now on.”

The bond in the middle of Harry’s chest practically _purred._

Harry smiled back at him. “So would I.”

And if his life wasn’t the same as it had been even a week ago, well, neither was Lucius’s. At least they were both the same degree of wrongfooted, if one wanted to see it that way.

 _One doesn’t have to see it that way,_ Harry concluded, and leaned in to kiss Lucius.

“Harry!” Ron yelled from the Burrow. “I have my eyes closed, and I’m going to count to twenty! By then, you had _better_ be cleaned up and back in the house for some more stilted conversation, or I am not going to be the one to defend you!”

Harry stole a quick kiss anyway, over the sound of Ron’s loud but slow counting, and cast a Cleaning Charm as Lucius did up his robes. “Thank you for coming with me,” he whispered.

Lucius looked at him, steady and unblinking. “Thank you for coming into my life.”

Harry was smiling as he came around the tree, and if Lucius caught his arm and turned their walk back to the Burrow into something stately and like a parade—

If he was on the _edge_ of preening, the _edge_ of strutting like a peacock with its tail spread—

Harry didn’t think either of them needed defending.

 **The End**.


End file.
